Results tagged ‘ Spring Training ’

Nathan Adcock, who the Royals took from the Pirates in the Rule 5 Draft, has made Kansas City’s Opening Day roster. Though Adcock has not pitched above Single-A before, he impressed the Royals enough to warrant a chance to test his ability at the big league level. Kansas City’s decision to keep Adcock was announced by GM Dayton Moore.

Adcock posted a 3.46 ERA in eight Cactus League games. He gave up five runs on 13 hits in 13 innings.

Now, this does not mean that Adcock is necessarily gone for good. If he is not able to stick on the Major League roster all year, Adcock would have to be offered back to the Pirates for $25,000. The Royals paid $50,000 to acquire him in December.

“We think there’s something in him,” Moore said. “He’s very poised, he’s very confident, he has things together for a young guy. We’re very pleased with the way he’s handled himself. He makes the ball move naturally; that’s a great sign of future success as a pitcher. He keeps the ball. Maybe he’s a starter of the future. We’ll see.”

The Pirates have traded infielder Josh Fields to the Rockies for a player to be named later or cash.

Fields had been reassigned to Minor League camp last Friday and the Pirates had told him they would help him try to find an opportunity elsewhere if he wanted. The corner infielder went 5-for-29 this spring after signing a Minor League deal with the Pirates over the winter.

This is it, folks. Later this afternoon the players will board a flight to Philadelphia. And I will board a flight to Pittsburgh. I am so looking forward to getting back home for 48 hours, regardless of how cold it might be.

I will not be covering the pair of games in Philly, though someone will be there to take care of news. I will rejoin the club in Chicago on Thursday for the day-before-Opening-Day workout and then look forward to being with you for the next six months.

One other note: You might have already noticed that pirates.com underwent a site redesign overnight. I hope you find the site easier to navigate. One omission, however, is a link to the blog in the headlines section. I’m not sure if that is going to change, so if you are a frequent blog reader and haven’t already, it might be a good idea to bookmark this page.

As for your last Spring Training morning news/notes…

Jeff Karstens is scheduled to pitch five innings (80 pitches) today in an effort to make sure that he would be ready to start the year in the rotation if needed. Karstens is a Plan B option in case James McDonald isn’t yet ready on April 5.

Speaking of McDonald, he threw a bullpen session this morning without any problems. Next for McDonald will be an outing on Thursday. The goal will be five innings. After that game, the Pirates will know whether McDonald will be able to start the season in the big league rotation.

It looks as if the Pirates will not make their final roster moves until the club is in Philadelphia. That means the bullpen remains unsettled.

In case you missed it yesterday, Josh Rodriguez is on the team and Pedro Ciriaco will begin the year in Triple-A. Also, because it appears as if Chris Snyder is headed to the DL, outfielder John Bowker and Jason Jaramillo win the final bench spots.

Might I say that seeing kU lose to VCU yesterday absolutely made my day/weekend/year. That said, our Bucs Bits Bloggers bracket challenge has most of us left with not a single correct Final Four pick (yes, I fit in this category). The current leader is D. Hague.

GM Neal Huntington said it is “very probable” that Chris Snyder will begin the year on the disabled list. Snyder continues to deal with back soreness, and though he said he is improving, the Pirates can’t risk beginning the season with a catcher who isn’t close to 100 percent.

With Snyder headed to the DL, Jason Jaramillo and Ryan Doumit will be the team’s two catchers. This also means that outfielder John Bowker will win the final bench spot, which could have gone to a third catcher if the team had opted to keep one.

The Pirates informed Pedro Ciriaco that he will begin the season in Triple-A Indianapolis. With Ciriaco out, the club is giving infielder Josh Rodriguez — the team’s Rule 5 pick — the chance to begin the year on the Major League club as the team’s backup middle infielder.

Ciriaco will bounce around as a super utility guy in the Minors, getting time at second, third, short and center field. Rodriguez can play three infield spots for the Pirates, and his bat did come to life as Spring Training went on.

GM Neal Huntington is 2-for-3 in keeping Rule 5 guys, with Evan Meek (via a trade) and Donnie Veal sticking. Last year, outfielder John Raynor lasted about a month before he was offered back.

Factoring into this decision is Rodriguez’s status as a Rule 5 guy. He would have to have been offered back to Cleveland had he not made the 25-man roster, and the Pirates believed Cleveland would take him back.

The Pirates have posted their lineup for Monday’s final Grapefruit League game and perhaps it provides a glimpse into the club’s upcoming roster decisions. In the lineup is Josh Rodriguez (who will be playing 3B); not listed as either a starter or a reserve is Pedro Ciriaco.

Could this mean that Rule 5 pick Rodriguez is going to stick and the Pirates are preparing to send Ciriaco to Triple-A? The Pirates are going to take one or the other, but not both. The club hasn’t announced such a roster move, but you have to wonder if that’s coming.

Catcher Chris Snyder said his back was feeling much better on Sunday and that there is a chance he will be able to resume some baseball activities as early as Monday. “I’m just going to hope for continued progression,” he said.

Snyder received treatment on Sunday and did additional exercises in the whirlpool. Asked if he could begin the year on the disabled list, Snyder said that he and the club have not yet discussed that possibility.

With Corey Wimberly and Dusty Brown out of the mix, the bench is coming into better focus. John Bowker, Pedro Ciriaco and Josh Rodriguez are competing for two spots (assuming Jaramillo begins the year as Doumit’s backup).

You won’t find Kevin Correia complaining much about his start on Saturday — a start in which he threw 92 pitches (59 strikes) in six innings. This was his first six-inning outing of the spring, and it puts Correia in perfect position to be ready for his Opening Day start next Friday.

The results were pretty good, too. He served up a two-run homer to Alex Rodriguez in the first inning after narrowly missing with a two-strike slider to Mark Teixeira right before. Correia then limited the Yankees (who played mostly their “A” lineup) to just four more hits and one other run in his last six innings.

“I thought it was definitely my best outing in spring,” Correia. “I felt strong the whole time. You want your last Spring Training outing to be good. You don’t want to go into the season thinking about how you didn’t pitch well the time before. I felt pretty good about this one.”

The one thing the Pirates don’t have to worry about is Correia not being stretched out to begin the year. He has done as well as anyone on the staff in terms of getting in the spring innings necessary to pitch deep at the onset of the regular season. With 92 pitches on Saturday, Correia should be good to go over 100, as needed, on Opening Day.

“I thought he got stronger as he went on,” Hurdle said. “He expects a lot of himself. He never shuts himself down on an inning or an outing. He takes a lot of pride in getting the ball and pitching deep and getting as many innings as he can get. I thought it was a very good way for him to finish up.”

Correia will get five days of rest (instead of the normal four) before his next outing.

***

Michael Crotta allowed one run on two hits in an inning of relief, but he remains very much in the mix for a bullpen spot in Pittsburgh. One of three relievers fighting for two openings in the bullpen, Crotta hadn’t allowed an earned run (10 innings) until this game.

“He is a big guy,” Hurdle said. “He repeats his delivery pretty well. He’s got good downhill plane. It’s hard sink and he’s added a complementary breaking ball to it at times. He’s pounded the strikezone. He has done everything that he can possibly do to at least build his confidence.”

***

Don’t look now, but the Pirates have dropped five in a row and nine of the last 11. That’s not exactly the way I’d imagine the club wants to head into the regular season. Hurdle, however, downplayed the importance of needing some wins this week when asked about the losing afterward.

“We play every game to win but if we don’t, we don’t,” he said. “We’re going to start the season and we’re not going to have any. You’ve got to play good baseball to win and we haven’t played complete games for the last 10-11 games. You have to throw a complete package out there. I’ll be more concerned when we’re running our regular team out there. Winning is always the intent, but again the focus will obviously shift to a higher degree of that once the season starts.”

With four spring games remaining, the Pirates are 10-19.

“We’ve got to go out and win ballgames and find ways to win ballgames,” first baseman Lyle Overbay said. “I think we need to do a little better job of picking each other up when things go wrong. It seems like it starts snowballing, and someone needs to pick us up – whether it’s a pitcher or a great defensive play – to snap us right out of it.”

Right-hander James McDonald threw 44 pitches (28 strikes) in a Triple-A game against the Yankees on Saturday. This marked McDonald’s first time back on the mound since leaving his March 11 start with left side soreness. McDonald said he felt just fine and seems on track to have a good chance at being able to open the season in the rotation.

McDonald’s line: 3 IP, 1 ER, 4 H, 0 BB, 3 K

“I still need to build a little more stamina,” he said afterward.

McDonald is slated to throw again in Florida on March 31st. At that point, the Pirates would like to get him stretched out to where he can pitch five innings deep. The hope is that then McDonald will be ready to make his season debut on April 5 in St. Louis.

The Pirates cut five players from big league camp on Friday morning, in turn dwindling the number of players still around to 36. That still means that 11 players will have to leave in the next week. But the roster is beginning to take shape with some clarity.

The following moves were made on Friday:

RHP Tyler Yates reassigned to Minor League camp

RHP Sean Gallagher reassigned to Minor League camp

RHP Daniel McCutchen optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis

INF Josh Fields reassigned to Minor League camp

C Wyatt Toregas reassigned to Minor League camp

Also, general manager Neal Huntington confirmed that lefty Joe Beimel will not be ready to begin the season with the Major League club. Beimel will throw another bullpen session this weekend, but that does not give him time to get enough innings in before next week’s season opener. Beimel will remain in Florida for extended Spring Training and could even pitch a bit in Indianapolis, if he still needs to build his innings count by the time the Minor League season begins.

With Beimel out of the Opening Day mix, the following relievers are competing for two open spots: Garrett Olson, Brian Burres, Chris Leroux and Mike Crotta.

Other morning news and notes…

Huntington said that the team has not yet finalized whether it will take two or three catchers north. A decision on that should come soon, Huntington added. The makeup of the bench really hinges on which way the Pirates go with this.

Before leaving McKechnie Field on Friday, Fields say he was unsure whether he’d report to Triple-A Indianapolis or ask for his release.

With Fields out of the mix for the corner utility bench spot, that leaves Steve Pearce and Andy Marte as the last two standing. Huntington said that there really is no scenario in which both Pearce and Marte make the club.

Brad Lincoln (right arm contusion) threw from a distance of 120 feet on Friday and said he felt fine. He is scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Saturday.

James McDonald remains scheduled to pitch in a Minor League game on Saturday.

On a side note, MLBlogs is changing its software (hopefully for the better) today, which means this blog is expected to be down during the afternoon hours. It might still be able to be accessed by you, but it won’t be able to be updated by me. Wanted to give you a head’s up so that you weren’t searching for anything new on here this afternoon. Once the update is done, I’ll get to learning the new program.

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